


near my heart, but in the soul

by belatrix



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Monster Hunters, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, implied/referenced PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 11:01:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16871725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: “Who will I be working with, then?”There’s a single envelope pushed across the table, and a trail of ash from Jon’s cigarette falls down across a faded, black-and-grey picture of a woman in a dark overcoat and a hat pulled low.“Her name is Daenerys,” Davos says, and his mouth twitches into something nearly amused at Jon’s raised eyebrows. "I thought you might know of her."





	near my heart, but in the soul

 

 

 

 

(The gun is a comforting weight at his hip, in his hand, in his line of sight, gloved fingers curled easy and light on the trigger, the chrome silver of it a familiar, steady companion. It’s the only constant in his life, the one thing he can pinpoint with resolute clarity in between cities and monsters and overlapping identities that are not his own. The one thing that he can be sure of, that sets a searing, focused sense of belonging coursing through his veins, a _warmth_ , curling tight and immovable around his spine.

The one thing, except Dany’s smile, and Dany’s hand in his, and Dany’s hair falling over his shoulder, and―

And.)

 

 

 

“I don’t need a partner,” he says in the beginning, but he has said it a hundred times, leans back in the steel chair as Davos, from across the table, barely looks up from his files and their grainy photographs. “I don’t _want_ a partner.”

A low, humming sound, the rustling of paper and the cautious, stuttering slide of the pen across it; Davos has been getting better with his letters, so much so that the higher-ups have been trusting him with written intel, old leather-bound tomes and crisp textbooks and grimoires with frail, yellowing pages.

“It’s not a matter of what you want, son,” he says, not unkind. “Everyone works better with―”

“Not me,” Jon says, and it’s an abrupt thing, too much emotion behind it. He swallows, pushing his face back into careful coldness again. Like he’s been taught. “I did have partners. You know what happened to them, all of them. I’m better off alone.”

 _I won’t go through it again_ , is what he does not say, but he knows Davos hears it all the same _. I can’t watch another person I love die_.

But this is not a place for sentiment, just like there is never a time for weakness, and the silence that follows is cold and heavy, pressing down on him like a physical thing, swollen with the memory of blood and screams and things untold. Jon resists the urge to roll his shoulders under his coat, to shift in his seat, lets out a breath and lights a cigarette instead with hands that do not shake if he tries hard enough.

Davos looks up at the hissing sound of the match, his eyes finding Jon’s through the swirling smoke. “I don’t make that call,” he says. He looks tired.

The gas lamp flickers above them. The electric is growing frightfully expensive these days, hoarded by the rich instead of expanding to more towns as had been promised, building after building plunged into familiar darkness, lanterns and pale gaslights everywhere again. _It’s_ _how the world works, kid_ , Mormont had said once, mouth curling into something far too sharp to be a smile. _It’s not our job to change that_.

“Yes, but you can―”

“I can’t. Stannis refuses to keep sending you out on the field without back-up, and, yes, _yes_ ,” voice rising slightly as Jon makes to protest, “he isn’t wrong, not about this. Your luck’s gonna run out one day, son. You can’t keep cheating death forever like you’ve been doing, not without someone by your side.”

Jon swallows down nothing. Takes another deep drag, letting smoke curl inside his throat to rot. “Fine,” he says, because he cannot think of anything else to say, looks away at the obvious relief that flashes across Davos’ weathered face. “Who will I be working with, then?”

There’s a single envelope pushed across the table, and a trail of ash from Jon’s cigarette falls down across a faded, black-and-grey picture of a woman in a dark overcoat and a hat pulled low.

“Her name is Daenerys,” Davos says, and his mouth twitches into something nearly amused at Jon’s raised eyebrows. “I thought you might know of her. She’s only been back in the country for a few weeks. But it’ll be good for both of you, to work with someone from another branch ―merging of contracts, good faith between colleagues, building trust, all that.”

Jon trails a finger across the corner of the file, imagines the pinprick of red that will bloom on his skin if he presses down just a little bit harder, right there at the paper’s knife-edge, “you make it sound like an arranged marriage.”

Davos huffs out something that might’ve been a laugh once. Jon forgets, sometimes, that the man has lost as much as Jon himself has. They all have. It’s the kind of life they’ve chosen. “Nothing that old-fashioned,” he says, and holds out another paper for Jon to sign. The single light hanging from the ceiling sizzles and sputters again. “I’ve told her you’re one of our best. You have to prove me right, too, because she’s one of _the_ best.”

The pen is cool and slippery in his hand. The ink seeps into the page, sealing, instinctive, smudging at the end of the last letter of his name like a pressed flower. Like a blood stain.

“When will I meet her?”

“She’s on a job. A routine thing, really, couple vampires stepping out of line out west, going against the treaties just to prove they’re tough,” Davos replies, already standing up. His hand falls on Jon’s shoulder, heavy, reassuring. “She’s scheduled to be back in three days, but from what I know of her, she’ll probably be done in two.”

 

 

 

(Jon’s apartment is dark and cluttered and cold, every corner filled with shadows that stretch across the ceiling like living, shaking things.

“You really ought to get a better place,” Sam had told him the first time he’d come over, to pore over the designs for the new weapons Jon was to be assigned. His hands had been nervous and fluttering, gaze fearful as if he was waiting for something to reach out and claw at him from under the teetering table. “You can afford it, now, can’t you?”

Jon had shrugged, shoulders rising and falling without any real meaning behind it. The house was never a home, no more than the army’s tents had been before it, and there was a sad sort of comfort in its bleakness, in that blurred anonymity, a space carved out from wood and brick and peeling wallpaper that held no memories inside it.

But Dany―

Dany likes it.

“Terribly artistic,” she says, lovely and lilting and with that bite of charmed amusement. “I know people who pay thousands to have their houses made up with such melancholic flair. If you ever retire, you should consider taking up decorating, Jon. You’d create very dramatic parlors, perfect for long brooding sessions, I can picture it already.”

Jon pauses, arms still full of wood for the fireplace. “You’re mocking me,” he says, and she arches a playful eyebrow. “Oh god. You’re not mocking me.”

“I would never.”

She’s laid out on his couch, long and impossibly graceful, hair a slash of silver across moth-eaten velvet. One pale arm is dangling delicately over the edge, her fingers brushing the carpet, and Jon’s gaze is drawn and glued there for the space of a dozen heartbeats.

“I could paint you like this,” he says before he knows he’s said it, his vowels rough with something he can’t pinpoint.

She blinks, startled.

He still can’t look away.

“…you would provide the art for the parlors as well, then,” she says, after a pause that swells and stretches. “Jon Snow, I am losing track of your many talents.”

But her voice is softer, as if she can’t help it, catching between the words in that way that makes his heart rattle against its cage, in that way that makes him want to kiss her and never stop kissing her and die and burn and drown while kissing her, in that way they’d promised not to allow themselves, because they’re not supposed to have room in their hearts for such things, they’re not supposed―

“Well,” she says, sitting up too quickly, as if trying to shake the same thoughts off her shoulders, “work now, art later. You better do something with that fire, Jon, we can’t brew the antidotes without it, can we?”

He breathes out, turns back to the fireplace as she starts gathering her books, and the picture of her is still engraved into his retinas, stuck across the insides of his skull, and this was never meant to happen, this place was never meant to feel like a home, but Dany’s in the middle of its shadows and they seem to dissipate around her, but now he’ll always see the lines of her body on that couch, but, _but_.)

 

 

 

Daenerys Targaryen returns from her three-day mission after precisely sixteen hours.

“Impressive,” Edd drawls, tucking his chin further into the folded layers of a black scarf against the wind. He doesn’t sound impressed, but he never does sound anything other than vaguely miserable. “The best thing on _my_ record is finishing a four-man job by myself, but that’s ‘cause the building exploded and those things we were supposed to kill ended up burning all by themselves. The other three guys died, there was a frankly unsettling amount of screaming. Still got a commendation for it, though, so I wager it’s alright for me to brag.”

Jon has his hands shoved deep in his pockets, mud on his boots and snow on his shoulders, breath materializing in white clouds before him. He isn’t cold, but then he’s always cold, or maybe he hasn’t been cold at all in a long time. His fingers curl around the piece of paper guarded safely in his right pocket, a thumb shifting across the looping, elegant scrawl: _train station, eight o’clock_.

“Edd, you can go,” he says, but his gaze is still sliding across every surface that surrounds him, quick, deliberate, mapping the exits, counting the sharp edges of every corner. It’s something he can’t shut off, not if he tried, and he shifts his weight just to feel the gun press into his hipbone, slight and reassuring.

An arched eyebrow. “You want me to leave you two lovebirds alone?”

Jon lets out a sound that might’ve been a sigh. The platform is nearly empty, a slow, thick fog settling over everything like a dream, swirling with the steam of the waiting engines, burrowing into rusty metal and through the gaps in the bricks. “We’re _supposed_ to meet alone,” he says, eyes darting back towards the main entrance, “it’s a display of trust, more than anything. We’ll be _working_ together, remember.”

Edd only shrugs, flicking his cigarette away. “I’ll be close,” he says, turns away at Jon’s answering nod. Jon watches him leave for all of twenty seconds, until his friend’s figure is a distant dark outline disappearing behind one of the gates, and―

“You’re rather early.”

His right hand flies to his holster on instinct, the left to the handle of the dagger strapped to his belt, body snapping around, shoulders rolling backwards and his feet lighter on the ground, ready to hurl. But there’s only a woman, standing a good ten feet away, her hands clasped daintily together, head tilted slightly to the side. Jon blinks and blinks again, and it registers, then, in the flash between his hand leaving the trigger and a loose strand of white-blonde hair curling in the wind, that there’s nothing ‘only’ about her.

“Daenerys Targaryen,” she says, voice perfectly polite, and her heels click on the concrete as she takes a few measured, easy steps forward. It’s a distracting, staccato sound, and one that she apparently allows, because Jon knows he would have heard it before she spoke, he must have, anything that signals a threat. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

She’s ―beautiful.

Disarmingly so, but it isn’t the first thing he notices about her. Her posture is relaxed, but not unguarded, her hands casual yet not idle. She’s wrapped in a dark red coat that must hide half a dozen knives underneath, tucked into straps and secret pockets, and there’s something fluid, something effortlessly confident in the way she moves to stand before him, that belies the slightness of her frame, the delicate softness of her features. This is someone who can _pounce_ , who can wield a weapon as well as Jon himself, someone who―

Jon exhales, lets his spine uncurl from its defensive stance. Hands out, open, nothing hidden. Trust, he remembers. They’re supposed to be building trust. “It’s almost eight,” he says, carefully level. “It seems I’m right on time.”

He can smell her, clear and focused, and he’s entirely certain it’s only because she wants him to; a heady blur of scents that crash and burn into each other and into his head, the faint traces of powder, a subtle note of expensive perfume, the sharp sting of blood and something that tastes too much like the aftermath of a forest fire.

It leaves him nearly breathless.

“Jon Snow,” he says, and holds out a hand. “Of the Night’s Watch.”

One of the trains rumbles behind them as its engine kicks up, and she looks back at him, considering. Up close her eyes are a startling, disorienting violet, and they’re calm. Assessing. Jon wonders if she’s waiting for him to try to impress her, or if she’s already decided that he’s found wanting.

But she takes his hand to shake and her own is steady, solid, not openly friendly but not hostile, either, nothing wary or condescending about it. “You can call me Dany,” she says, and smiles.

 

 

 

(Jon Snow knows these things with clear, stinging, blood-deep clarity:

You always have to keep moving and you always have to keep fighting, because you’re dead if you’re not fighting, and you’re no use to anyone if you’re dead.

You must be fast and you must be cold, because there are things out there that will always be faster, colder, more dangerous; you can’t hope to exist in this world unless you learn how to be dangerous, too.

You can’t build a life if you’re a weapon, you can’t fall in love if you’re a soldier, you can’t imagine a future if no one expects you to live past twenty-five, anyway.

And then Dany’s kissing him, her lips on his like a promise, like the beginning of something hopeful, and she’s moving under him and he’s moving with her―

―and he doesn’t know any of those things any more.)

 

 

 

“You’re quite good at this,” she says, brushing down her coat where the fabric is spattered with soot-dark blood. “I see Mr. Seaworth wasn’t exaggerating, after all.”

Their first case is a resounding success, if not a slightly violent, messy one. Their coordination is good, their fighting styles complementing each other’s, the element of surprise on their side. They barely had to hunt down the demon after Jon had managed to de-possess their victim; Dany had been ready at the corner of the warehouse, bare hands raised and incantations smooth and effortless on her lips, her pentagram holding strong for as long as Jon needed to take out his weapons and light it on fire.

“Mr. Seaworth always speaks well of everyone,” he says, trying to ignore the way his chest clutches at the way she’s looking at him, at her expression that seems genuinely impressed. “I’ll clean up here. You can go, if you want. I’ll have the report for the Night’s Watch ready first thing tomorrow morning.”

The day is slowly yellowing into noon, casting the distant horizon of the city in a blurred blaze, and Dany is standing there, backlit by the dipping sun like she belongs in a story, a fairy tale, and he stares for all of ten seconds, at which point he realizes he’s staring.

“I could help you,” she suggests, placing her knives back in their holsters with practiced, graceful ease, “besides, I don’t mind it getting dark. Seeing the city center from afar, lit up with the electric at night, it’s something else, isn’t it?”

Jon makes a noncommittal sound, doesn’t quite trust his words, not now that something old and unbidden is swelling up inside him like a bruise. He hadn’t _expected_ this. When he agreed to work with Daenerys Targaryen, he’d found himself anticipating a cold, if competent, woman, someone with a ruthless heart and cut diamonds for eyes, death and edges and maybe a little cruelty, maybe a little madness, because the job does this to you, turns you inside out, this life twists you and hurts you and changes you until all gentleness you might have had is bled out, but Dany isn’t like that, she—

“Are you daydreaming, Jon Snow?” she asks, somewhat teasingly, head tilted slightly like a subtle sort of dare, or perhaps like she’s only trying to decipher him. It isn’t something he understands; he holds no secrets but the secret of why his skin is always cold to the touch, he doesn’t know what she expects to find should she peek inside him.

“I’m only a bit tired, I suppose,” he says with some diplomacy, glances away, the weight of those impossible violet eyes suddenly this side of too much. “We should get everything cleaned up and head back before nightfall, yeah?”

They end up taking the steam-powered tram back to town, pressed almost flush together in the crowd as Jon’s grip shifts and slips on the overhead rail, all his weapons pressing sharp and familiar into his skin over the customary black fabrics of his uniform. The ride is bumpy and uncomfortable and not all that much speedier than walking, truly, but several of the Night’s Watch men are old enough to remember a time when horses and carriages were the only means of transportation between cities, so Jon supposes he ought to be grateful for what they can get.

Dany slides even closer to him as more people climb aboard at each station, and he tries to swivel to the side, allow her some room so that her body doesn’t have to be crushed against his with the press of the crowd. She gives him a hint of a smirk at that, and a half-shrug that is likely meant to reassure him that she doesn’t mind. Some people look their way, quick, fleeting glances that waver between suspicion and awe, but there are open stares too, at the dark leather straps that peak under their coats, at Jon’s gloves and the amulets wrapped around his wrists and the faded scar on his face, at Dany’s intricate silver braids and the gleaming onyxes pinned to her ears.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she says when they reach their stop, and there’s rain coming in the air and mud on the ground and a new curve to her smile that looks like fondness, and Jon looks up at the grey slate of the sky before meeting her eyes again, dark purple and sparkling still in the fading light.

“Yes,” he says, and it comes out rough, like she tore it from him. “Tomorrow.”

He sleeps alone that night, because he always sleeps alone, but this is the first time he feels something like an emptiness by his side, arm stretching out across the bare mattress, folding over nothing. He closes his eyes and sees Dany’s face, opens them again to stare up at the cracked paint of the ceiling.

This is bad. This is very, very bad.

He is not supposed to have room left inside him for these things, not anymore.

He is not supposed—

Falling asleep that night isn’t easy, but then it never is. It’s like any other time, like every time, he slips only barely into unconsciousness and the world bleeds out dark and blurred, his hands don’t shake, or they do, at night it’s always hard to tell, nightshirt sticking to his body with the chill of sweat, plastered wet and awful over a pattern of jagged, curling scars. He falls asleep, and dreams of gleaming blades and a snowstorm before waking up again. He falls asleep, and dreams of his family drowning in blood, wordless screams that evaporate before they can take form, he dreams of howling wolves and dead blue eyes and ice digging into his heart, spreading across the inside of his chest, tearing through him from the inside.

He dreams until he isn’t dreaming any more, until he’s painfully, horribly awake and muffling a shout into the crumpled pillow, nails digging into the sheets and hair dripping cool sweat into his eyes.

He pads his way to the bathroom, holding himself upright against the wall. The sink is cracked and stained with something that only looks like rust from a distance; the mirror is blurred, unblemished, but that’s only because he replaced it. Three nights ago he drove a fist into the last one, slept on the tiled floor with glass shards still lodged under his skin.

 _You need to get some help, son_ , Davos has told him, so many times. In that concerned, tired way of his. _Real help, not those self-proclaimed, drunk therapists of the Watch_.

Jon doesn’t need help. He has his gun and he has his knives and he has curtains to hide behind in the morning and ground coffee to keep him awake, he has his cases and his orders and the monsters he needs to kill, he has—

He doesn’t need help.

He doesn’t know _what_ he needs.

 

 

 

(Two months after their first hunt, Dany levels a steady, focused gaze on him, eyes big and moonlight-bright in the faltering shadows of his bedroom.

“Something wrong?” he asks, halfway through pulling a black shirt over his head. His hair is still wet from the shower, steam inching along the walls where the bathroom door is open, his feet bare on the wooden floorboards. They creak under his weight.

She looks at him looking back at her, and a quiet sound escapes her, almost a sigh. She sits down on the edge of his bed and the movement is careful, the mattress barely dipping under her weight. “What _are_ you, Jon Snow?” she says, with a touch of something almost awed in her voice.

Jon stills. His fingers clench into the rumpled shirt.

“What do you mean?”

The corner of her lips, curling into the beginning of a smile, half-amused, half-wary, not entirely without some gentleness. “You don’t sleep,” she says simply, as if there is a secret and it is only theirs. “And I’ve never seen you eat, I’m pretty sure of that.”

Jon swallows, has to consciously stop himself from running a hand through his hair. Something kicks a little inside his chest, and, and —he knows that _something_ has a name.

“I don’t eat on the job,” he says, as evenly as he can manage. He turns away, starts fumbling with the pockets of his jacket hanging from a nail on the wall, searching for a smoke. Something to hold, something to hide behind.

“You’re always on the job.”

“I, well.” His fingers are not trembling yet. He fishes out a cigarette, starts looking around for the matches with a bubble of hysteria rising up inside him, pushing against the walls of his lungs. Scratching up his throat. “I’m not—“

“Jon.”

And there’s that way she says his name, one quiet syllable that bursts through him and carves open wounds through his insides, she says it as if it’s something worth saying, unlike how she speaks anyone else’s name. She says _Jon_ and it’s laced with affection, with a silent vulnerability she won’t allow anyone else to see.

It does strange things to him. As if someone had reached a hand inside his body and pulled everything out, put nothing but her voice and her smile back inside where all the blood used to be.

She’s left the bed and crossed the room before he knows she’s moved at all, and suddenly there are her hands on him, one cupped on his cheek, tentative as if she thinks he might break; and the other lifting up to press against his chest, pale fingers spreading out over the coarse black fabric covering his heart.

“The wound you have, right here,” she says, and her eyes find his, and he can’t look away, he wants to look away, he wants to keep looking at her forever, “how did you survive it?”

Her face is open. Her face, he realizes, is sad. And those eyes are huge, silver eyelashes casting spider-web shadows on the rise of her cheekbones, and Jon can’t, he can’t—

“I didn’t.”

Dany lets out a careful exhale. There is a moment, the space of half a breath where his stomach pulls and clenches with the horrible, cutting certainty of what will happen. She will pull away, disgusted and horrified, she will draw her blade, cast the incantation, because he, he’s the things that go bump in the night, the things they’ve been trained to kill, the dead, dangerous things whispered of before bedtime to frighten children at night, frozen blood and frozen heartbeats and the kind of coldness that clings and burns and kills, he’s—

She tips her head, hand moving through his hair, curling around his neck to guide him down, and she’s kissing him.

Her lips move slowly, carefully against his and Jon lets out a sound like he’s been hurt, head spinning, skin ablaze in every place where it’s pressed up against hers, arms wrapping around her to pull her close, unable to stand the air between them. Her mouth opens under his and he licks inside, throat closing up with how much he’s wanted this, how hard he’d been trying to convince himself he didn’t. She sighs into him and he melts into the fold of her body crushed against his chest, tastes lemons and tea and something like smoke, feels alive, so gloriously, achingly _alive_.

He’d nearly forgotten what that was like.

He’s breathing hard when they part, and her mouth is kiss-swollen and shiny and curved into a smallsmile. “Well,” she says, drags a gentle finger along his bottom lip. “That would explain it.”)

 

 

 

Jon took the job because he couldn’t do anything else.

Because he couldn’t _not_ take it.

The story was simple enough, or at least its beginning was, a thing straight out of the books: a bastard boy leaving his half-family’s home with his head bowed against the winter wind, mind whirling with the possibilities of a future where he finally _belongs_ , flanked by hardened, battle-weary men who would become his brothers through camaraderie and hard-won scars. Something thrumming in his chest, something that had the aftertaste of excitement and dreams, that fluttered at the mere idea of becoming one of those people, dark and severe and spoken of in hushed whispers throughout the country, _demon hunters, monster hunters, protectors, saviors_ —

Saviors. If he’d known what would come of it, he would have laughed at the thought. But vows are vows and a soldier is a soldier, and the words he spoke when he signed his contract, wrote his name on rune-decorated parchment in his own blood, were not lies.

He’s been trying really hard to make them not-lies.

“The sword in the darkness,” Dany says on their third joint case, her voice quiet, contemplative. “The shield that guards the realms of men. It does sound intimidating, it’s true.”

Jon re-adjusts the buckles of his gear, pulling the leather straps tighter around the places where the obsidian blades are secured. “It’s not meant to be intimidating,” he says, although he isn’t sure he knows what anything’s supposed to mean, any more. “It’s meant to be—“

“A promise,” she says, and he stills, turning to look at her. She’s staring out ahead, her profile pale and singularly beautiful against the starlit sky. They’re on a rooftop, and a single strand of hair has escaped from her elaborate braids, brushing softly against the curve of her cheek. It’s such a strangely intimate, strangely fragile sight that Jon almost leans forward, almost reaches out to tuck it carefully behind her ear. “Or a reminder, I would think.”

“A reminder,” he repeats, and it comes out a little low, a little hoarse. He blinks, eyes darting back to the alleyway below.

“Yes.” He isn’t looking but he thinks there’s something quietly sad in that word, in the way it leaves her like a rushed exhale, three letters woven together with a hint of buried _tiredness_ , and it’s so familiar it hurts. “A reminder that someone _has_ to do this. Stand at the front, stare that… darkness in the face. Not for bravery, or for songs to be written about them. But for—“

She trails off, and Jon breathes, and a part of him, secreted away and lying supine somewhere between his ribs, wants to take her hand in his, wants to tell her, _I know, gods, I know_.

“—for the people,” he finishes, and it’s barely above a whisper. “Whoever they might be.”

He hears her shift, imagines her elegant fingers running along the curl of her athame, as in preparation. He’s never seen her wear gloves, he realizes, not even when her hands are gripped tight and steady around serrated steel, or pressed against hot metal. Not when they had to draw a fire circle to trap the demon that’d killed twelve children not too far from here, not ever.

“You don’t enjoy your work, Jon Snow,” she says, and it reaches him distant and hazy, and he still can’t bear to look at her. He thinks something will fall apart inside him if he does. Like a chink of ice will shatter and reveal something softer underneath. Something vulnerable.

“It’s my work,” he mutters. “It’s what I swore to do.”

 _It’s the only thing I’m good at_ , he does not say, but the words are there all the same, hanging in the cool, cracked air between them, swirling with the wind and the flickering shimmer of the stars.

“There’s our witch,” Dany says suddenly, barely above a whisper, as a tall, hooded figure emerges from behind a corner in the alleyway. “Ready?”

Jon nods, tight, and just like that the moment breaks —only it doesn’t, because he’ll still think of that loose silver strand caressing the side of her face, he’ll still dream of the marble line of her throat, he’ll still fail spectacularly at getting her out of his head.

 

 

 

(They’re in Dany’s bed, naked and wrapped up in her soft, sweet-smelling covers, a single finger ringed in white gold tracing the scars across Jon’s chest.

“They’re ugly,” he says, low and unfocused. He blows a halo of smoke up at the ceiling, and the finger becomes an open hand splayed right above his heart. She presses down, lightly, silently, and it feels like a secret. It feels like a confession.

And then there are her lips on one of the scars, and another, a trail of the faintest kind of fire, almost soothing in the way it leaves goose bumps in its wake, almost maddening. “No,” she says, and she smiles, kisses his chest again, “they truly aren’t.”)

 

 

 

“What is she like?” Sam asks him during one of their mandatory research sessions, voice caught somewhere between nervousness and wonder. “Daenerys?”

They’ve been holed up in the Watch’s library for what has started to feel like days, teetering stacks of books piled haphazardly everywhere Jon can see, littered all over the tables and strewn across the bare floors. Their last hand-held gas lamp ran out somewhere into the fourth tome on blood-fueled spellwork, and Jon had sighed, briefly forfeited his lighter (engraved with the silver _S_ of a family he can’t think about and can’t forget), so Sam could light the candles currently dripping wax onto the brittle pages they’re supposed to be poring through.

“She’s—“ Jon looks down at the letters that have begun to blur into each other, fingers drumming an abstract rhythm on the edge of the table that gives off splinters if you’re not careful enough. “She’s very good at her job.”

There’s a sound like a cough of laughter, followed by the resounding thud of yet another frighteningly huge book being dropped between them. “Of course she is, she’s Daenerys Targaryen,” Sam says, something vaguely teasing about it that makes Jon glance up. His friend’s fingers are ink-smudged and his eyes are tired, bloodshot, but he’s the kind of man who’ll stay stubbornly anchored in this cave of dust and yellowed parchments until he has the answers he wants, all life outside their cramped library fading into an afterthought. In that, he makes one of the Watch’s biggest assets, no matter that he might never quite manage to believe that of himself. “That’s not what I asked, though,” he says, eyebrows quirking.

“What else am I supposed to say?” Jon huffs out, with feeling. It only makes Sam’s mouth twitch harder in his half-hearted attempt to hide a smile. “She’s a good person, too.”

Because the thing about her is, she has turned out to be as exceptional as everybody says.

 _Better_ , a muffled voice inside him keeps on insisting, but he ignores it, bites it down like the aftertaste of blood and melting snow, because he’s learned to measure people by the range of their shooting and their ability with a pair of twin daggers, by how fast they can run and how well they chant in Latin, and this is not about kindness, or a pair of eyes that look at you like you’re something worth looking at, this is not, this is _not_.

Sam’s expression seems to soften, at that, or maybe he’s just noticed the way Jon’s hands are clenching around nothing, the way his shoulders have tensed into rigid, sharp lines. “Jon,” he says, and it’s quieter, hesitant, “you need —you have to start letting people in again, you know that.”

“What,” Jon says, and it’s not a question, except for all the ways that it is, “is that even supposed to mean, Sam.”

Around them the candlelight flickers, and for a moment, all Jon can think of is the glossy picture of Dany’s hair under the sun, the glint of rings looped around her dainty fingers and the startling, abrupt reflection of witchlight off the dragon-shaped brooches pinned to her coats.

“It means,” Sam says, gaze slipping back to whatever ancient tome is open in front of him now, “that not everything ends in blood. You can’t keep yourself from, well, _feeling things_ —just because feeling things has hurt you in the past.”

“Feeling things has killed me in the past,” Jon says, and it’s a harsh thing, sitting too roughly in his throat, but Sam doesn’t startle away. Jon almost apologizes, feels guilty as soon as the words have burst from him, but Sam is Sam, and he won’t hold one outburst against him.

“Yes, well,” Sam mutters, hurriedly turning a page, “you’re here now. You’re here, and this isn’t yet another partnership, this thing with Daenerys. I’ve known you long enough to be able to see _that_ , Jon.”

The thing that stings: Sam isn’t wrong. There are _moments_. They’ll have to share a room on a case and he’ll watch the curve of her body under the sheets, coiled and feline, shimmering hair spilling across the pillows and he’ll think of laying his head next to hers, just so he might catch a glimpse of her face in sleep, listen to her heartbeat as it evens out, tangle his fingers through hers against the hard mattress; she’ll smile at him from across the hall during a briefing and he’ll feel something stutter between his ribs, a desire he’s tried to keep frozen, rearing up and swirling around him like dust particles, ever-present; her hand will be steady and light on his arm as they cross a street, walking side by side, her scarf whipping in the wind and her mouth painted red by the cold, and he’ll think about leaning forward, leaning down—

There are moments, but Jon is a soldier if he’s one thing, if he’s anything, he’s a weapon and a gun filled with cold iron and a curved blade, he’s a body that’s always cold, except for when Dany’s touching him, except, _except_.

“It’s a partnership,” he ends up saying, because there are too many things stuck behind his teeth and if he lets them out they might cut him to pieces, “that’s all there is.”

“Alright,” Sam says, and it’s more sigh than anything, a little sad, a little resigned. “If you say so.”

 _One death was enough_ , Jon might have said, for all he’s been thinking it since the first time he looked at Dany and realized he couldn’t look away. _Once was enough_ , because his heart has already been pierced through and cut open, in ways more literal than anyone else could imagine, and he’s already lost too many people he’s loved —but some nights, only some nights, he thinks he could do it.

He could take that heart that bled and burst and stopped beating before it was kicked violently back to life, he could take it and hand it to her, make it hers to break, to keep and hold and cut through all over again, if only he could find the courage.

If only he could tell her.

“So,” Sam’s saying, high and abruptly cheerful, an obvious but no less heart-warming attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere, “we might actually be getting somewhere, here, but honestly, Jon, the library’s filing system is horrendous, I wonder how they expect us to get any work done at _all_.” A frustrated exhale, yet another book being flung open, kicking up plumes of dust. “And there hasn’t been any news on the Difference Engine, either —do you think they’re making any progress? Can you _imagine_ it, Jon, being able to look up things without having to go through century-old tomes? There was an interview from Oldtown, a couple of weeks ago, they said that when they find a way to hook up logic patterns to _actual electric circuits_ —“

Jon smiles a little, fond and amused. “Yeah, well, even if they do manage that, I doubt the Night’s Watch budget will be able to cover that any time soon.”

It’s a nice dream, certainly, but it’s been a long time and too much death since Jon last allowed himself the luxury of dreaming. There’s something painfully appealing about the potential reforming of their institution, about the what-ifs of introducing new things, new ideas. For a moment, he wonders if Dany would want to do that too, _change_ things, and instantly knows that she would. But it’s a dream, just like Sam’s enthusiasm about invisible, electric data is a dream.

Just as pulling Dany close and telling her, just _telling_ her, has remained a dream.

 

 

 

(“What about you,” he says one day, and she cocks her head, a spark focused and intense like nothing he’s ever seen burning in those violet eyes, “what are _you_?”

He doesn’t quite know what to expect, doesn’t quite know what he’s asking, truly, but her gaze doesn’t waver and she sighs, a little, a small sound she doesn’t bother to stop. “I suppose I ought to tell you,” she says, “maybe it’s only fair.”

He remains silent, looking at her and half-afraid to move, because Dany is a lot of things —she’s brilliant and she’s dangerous and she’s beautiful, and she’s kind-hearted in a way no-one should have the right to be kind-hearted in this line of business; he’s seen those delicate hands she’s holding up now burying a blade into a man’s throat but he’s also seen them putting flowers in a vase,  braiding her best friend’s hair, handing out food to children at the church luncheon and wrapped around his shoulders when she calmed him down from a panic attack, the first night they slept together and he woke up heaving and gasping into the night, his head still filled with ice-cold nightmares of dead eyes and dead fingers reaching for his heart.

Dany is a lot of things, but she’s even more, too, the same way he himself is more, something else, something _other_ , a thing he knows deep in his gut but can’t explain how, can’t—

“Or perhaps I could show you,” she says, still holding her hands up, pale and unmarred and so, so steady.

Jon holds very still, and everything turns golden and red.

When the fire dies down, the room plunged back into familiar half-darkness again, Dany looks back at him and her gaze is hesitant, careful, something oddly apologetic about it.

Jon breathes, says, “alright, that was awfully impressive, and a bit terrifying, but I do know how to use flamethrowers, too, I just haven’t figured out a way to turn them invisible yet.”

There is a moment of heavy, cloying silence. Dany blinks, smoke still wafting off of her in silvery waves that blur at the edges, trail along the walls and curl up to the peeling white of the ceiling. And then she’s laughing, high and rippling and blowing a hole through his chest with how young and delighted she sounds, how terribly beautiful it makes her look.

“If you want your jokes to be successful, you might want to consider delivering them with less of a brooding frown,” she says, stepping into his arms. Jon feels her heat bleed into him in every expanse of flesh where her body molds against his, and his hands fall gently down on her waist, her lips brushing against his jaw line as she tips back her head to look at him.

“So,” he says, breath catching, “what is the term I want? Pyromancer? Warlock with an expertise in pyrotechnics? Something more sensational and elaborate?”

Dany kisses him light and feathery on the cheek, bites his earlobe, says, “I recall I’ve allowed you to call me Dany,” and they both laugh into each other’s mouths as he walks her up against the wall, her legs wrapping around his waist with fluid, easy familiarity.)

 

 

Their first kiss tastes like smoke and blood and saltwater.

“I never thought I would die like this, _again_ ,” he says, hoarse and choked and oddly, incongruously calm. Blood swirls between his hands where he’s clutching them to his chest, wet and slippery and a deep, dark red that looks nearly black in the moonlight. Everything _hurts_ , the cut flesh burning as if it’s trying to slide off his bones, each breath coming out a sharp, stuttered gasp.

“You’re not going to, you idiot,” she says, and her face is like an apparition above him, arsenic white, those lovely eyes shimmering with tears. “You brave, reckless idiot, I’m not going to let you die.”

The scorched corpse of the werewolf (he almost can’t bear the irony) that sunk its claws in him is lying, mangled and forgotten, somewhere to their left, and one of Dany’s hands tangles with his, her fingers clutching his own with a wild, fervent sort of desperation.

He swallows down something ugly and urgent that has caught in his throat, closes his eyes when he feels her pull him close, breathes in the scent of her skin, eyelashes fluttering against the silver curtain of her hair.

“I’d been meaning to tell you something,” he says, the words a faltering exhale against the cut of her collarbone, “and I think now may be the only chance I’ll get.”

She breathes out a laugh, and he thinks another death might not be so terrible if this is the last thing he’ll ever hear.

“Stop being so melodramatic, Jon Snow,” she says, no real bite in it, and before he can respond her mouth is on his own, soft and warm and wet with the tears she’s let fall after all, and he can, he can die now that he’s had this, only she won’t let him, and maybe he isn’t ready to stop kissing her yet after all.

 

 

 

( _I love you_ , he almost says, _I love you, even if it ends up ruining us_.

It was inevitable, because Daenerys Targaryen is a gentle smile and a gentle touch as much as she is mythology, is fire and death and glory but a whispered promise, too, is as bright as the flames that dance on her fingertips and every bit as deadly, is a wonder, isn’t his, but sometimes her eyes find his in the dark and there’s something there, like maybe she would let him, like maybe she could be.

 _I should tell her_ , he thinks, over and again, watching her hands twist around one of his amulets, long hair loose and bright as a dream, her bare feet on his cluttered coffee table.

 _I should tell her_ , he thinks, slipping down on the floor, resting his head on her thigh. She hums a little and strokes through his hair, pulls him closer, keeps him there, knows without being told that he could stay here forever, listening to her even breaths and the crackling of the fireplace, curled into her, looking up at her, anchored on this carpet and the loose floorboards underneath it for as long as she chooses to stay.

 _I should tell her_ , he thinks, doesn’t quite dare yet, but he leans into her all the same, and she answers with a press of fingers at his nape, not enough to hurt, enough to say everything it needs to.

“I know,” she says, bending down, lifting his hand to her mouth and Jon watches, holding his breath, as she places a kiss on the inside of his wrist. “You don’t have to say it, I know.”)

 

 

 

Jon wakes with a soundless scream, sweating under the covers. This is not unusual —he’s well aware of the correlation between frozen nightmares and a sweat-drenched kick back into consciousness, adrift in the middle of a bed that feels like a field of mud and snow.

But it’s different this time. Less claustrophobic, not quite as desperate, and the covers are pooling warm and scented around him, something so oddly comforting about them that makes him forget whatever terror he might have been dreaming of.

He blinks, and blinks again. It takes him until shifting on the pillows and turning his head into a tangle of white-gold to remember. Oh. _Oh_.

Dany’s still asleep, body curled with the blankets pulled up over her breasts, the pale line of her back almost glowing in the faint morning light trickling in through the gaps in the curtains. For a while he can do nothing but stare, transfixed, at the play of dust particles around her hair, the way it curls soft and glossy on his sheets.

There’s a moment, fleeting like it’s make out of glass shards, where Dany sighs a little in her sleep, and Jon turns onto his side until he’s pressed all along her body, draping one arm over her, fingertips smoothing along the plane of her stomach.

“Dany,” he says, voice rough with sleep, and saying her name sends something warm and fluttering through him, curling low in his belly, “Dany.”

She hums something soft and unintelligible, tucks her face into the pillow. Jon presses a kiss to her shoulder, and another to the back of her neck. “We have to get up,” he says, a little louder, lips still brushing her skin like he can’t get enough, like he could never pull away, “we got a case today, vampires, _again_ , we’re supposed to take the morning train if we want to make it before sunset.”

A muffled mumble, Dany rolling over, the sheets moving with her and her body curving into his. Jon rubs his hand up and down her back, peppers kisses along her hairline and doesn’t want to leave this bed, doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t—

“How’s your chest,” she mutters against his skin, shivering slightly as his fingers trail up the scorching line of her spine.

“Healing,” he says, quiet, one hand reaching blindly around to tangle with hers, fingers curling together between their bodies, one of her legs sliding forward until it’s tucked between his own. “I guess I won’t die again, after all.”

“I told you I wouldn’t let you.” Dany’s smile a hot curve against the flesh between his neck and shoulder. “You should listen to me more, Jon Snow.”

“I always listen to you,” and it’s a truth in more ways than one. He moves his fingers to her wrist, feels the steady pulse underneath, grounding him in this moment, in this bed, in her embrace. “Dany,” he says, and she kisses between his collarbones slow and lazy, leaves a soft bite into the skin under her mouth before kissing over it again. “Dany, if I—“

“Never,” she says, rearing back slightly so that their eyes meet, her own wide and insistent and burning. She pulls him closer, wraps an arm around him as if asking without words to be pinned under the weight of Jon’s body. He obliges, rolling them over until her legs are spread around his hips, drops a kiss to her temple and another to the corner of her mouth. “I _told_ you I won’t let you, Jon, don’t make have to say it again.”

 _I love you_ , he wants to say, because it’s the only response he can think of, because it’s the only thing he can feel, with her little breaths in his ear and her fingers tattooing invisible patterns into his back, her small gasp as he slides inside her resonating all around him, _I love you, I love you_.

“Dany,” he says, low and urgent and too much, a heart mangled and cut and glued together again beating madly, frantically behind his ribs, and it’s hers, now, only hers, “ _Dany_.”

“Yes,” she breathes. He tucks his face into her throat, a growl tearing its way from his chest when he starts moving and she arches her body to press tighter against his, “yes, Jon, _yes_.”

 

 

 

(“You’re always so cold,” Dany says, with the quiet wonderment of someone for whom death is distant and big and burning bright and red, not a lurking shadow in the ice. She touches him still, in spite of it, _because_ of it, the weight of her hand over old wounds light and more than a little fond. “I don’t really mind it.”

“You do have enough fire for the both of us,” he says, and she answers with a laugh that he smothers with a kiss, deep and slow and fever-hot, can't help smiling against her lips.)

 

 

 


End file.
